Voters are seduced, not appalled, by Cameron’s poshness: it’s his secret weapon

I was slightly sceptical of Team Cameron’s decision to unveil their ‘secret weapon’ last Sunday — namely, Dave’s wife Samantha. Not that she isn’t luminously beautiful. And her ability to juggle motherhood with a high-flying career will undoubtedly appeal to many professional women. Rather, it’s her social provenance that concerned me. Wouldn’t her transparently upper-class persona upset what the American journalist Michael Wolff has called the ‘careful tonal balance’ of Cameron’s ‘postmodern transmutation of the class issue’?

But, oh, how wrong I was. A couple of days later, the papers were full of stories about the ‘Sam Cam bounce’. According to one opinion poll, her appearance on television had boosted the Conservatives’ lead to 11 points.

The conventional wisdom among the commentariat is that Dave’s privileged background is a non-issue in the campaign. It’s just chippy journalists like me that are obsessed with it. ‘The British public are more fair-minded than one would think from reading the British press,’ claims Andrew Gimson, the Telegraph’s parliamentary sketch writer. ‘The idea of Eton irritates commentators, many of whom went to less grand fee-paying schools, more than it annoys the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus.’

But is this really true? Is it not conceivable that, actually, the reason Sam Cam has given the Tories a bounce is because, deep down, the great British public is still quite impressed by posh people? Deference is supposed to have been in terminal decline since the Swinging Sixties and, certainly, no one under 50 would ever feel tempted to tug his forelock on being confronted with a toff. But I suspect it is still there, swirling around in the collective unconscious. The fact that David Cameron is so at ease with himself, has such clear skin, can draw on a bottomless well of self-confidence — all these hallmarks of good breeding may still strike a deep chord with the electorate.